The Ultimate Fighter Interview Series - Efrain Escudero
Posted by Jeffrey Harris on 11.18.2008
The Vile One speaks with another member of Team Nogueira, lightweight tournament contender, Efrain Escudero.
Shortly after my interview with Ryan Bader, I had the opportunity to speak with another member of Team Nogueira on season 8 of The Ultimate Fighter, lightweight MMA fighter, Efrain Escudero. Efrain won his way into the house by defeating Ido Pariente, and then made his way into the semi-finals of the lightweight tournament after subbing Team Mir lightweight contestant, Shane Nelson. Escudero is still undefeated with a record of 10-0 in his professional MMA career. He currently trains at Southwest MMA out of Tempe, Arizona and went on to train with current UFC Interim Heavyweight World Champion, Antonio Rodrigo "Minotauro" Nogueira following this interview.
The Vile One: How was your experience training on the show with Nogueira and your team?
Efrain Escudero: Being on the show was an eye opener. I got to meet a lot of people and roll around with the top guys in the world in ju-jitsu and even in boxing and such. It opened a lot of new doors. Now I can go and train in different places . . . I mean we are all there to fight, and I expect everyone to go in there and fight. But more than anything, I'm there for the experience -- it's a great experience to be in there, and rolling around with these guys and getting the exposure. So being in the house, it was a great experience in there out of so many that try out, and I was selected so it was very good opportunity for me to go.
TVO: Was it hard to keep yourself composed around Junie Browning?
EE: Yeah, actually, it was. Junie is always going to be Junie . . . he tried to take me out of my gameplan. I'm there to show what I'm all about in the cage, not on the couch, you know I'm not going to get into a fight in the house and ruin my whole shot at everything. But I just kind of controlled myself, held my tongue, and remembered we're not there to make a show in the house, we're there to make a show in the cage.
TVO: We saw a tiny bit of Lyoto Machida on TV hanging out with you at Nogueira's birthday party? Was Machida just too elusive for the cameras?
EE: Well, I dunno about that. Lyoto Machida, he taught us well, but I don't know why they didn't put him on. He was there as well as Anderson Silva and all of them, but I just wonder why they didn't put him on or give him more camera time because he was there about a week, a week and a half.
TVO: Have you aspired to fight in any different weight class in your career besides lightweight?
EE: I think if they had a 145 pound weight class I could try and make that, but anything bigger I don't think I should.
TVO: Well they do have the featherweight division in the WEC.
EE: Yeah but the WEC, I don't want to be in the WEC. I want to be in the UFC. I think there's a lot more competition. And I know that for you to be the best you have to beat the best, and I don't think that the WEC -- I mean the WEC has some tough fighters, but I don't think that it has the competition that the UFC does. They might have top fighters, but the UFC has the top world fighters, you know?
TVO: So you really want to test yourself then?
EE: Yeah, I like pushing myself to the limit, and you can't be the champ until you beat the best, you know?
TVO: Why'd you decide to go into MMA after competing in wrestling in high school and college?
EE: I started wrestling when I was a young kid in junior high and moving onto high school, I was an Arizona State champ . . . then I went on and became an All American. But wrestling is not like football where if you like play like for life -- probably after college you get a multi-million dollar contract . . . or even basketball, even baseball. We don't have that with wrestling. So with MMA now, it opens new doors for us, so now that we've been wrestling all our lives now we can use our wrestling to get into Brazilian jiujitsu and some other techniques, and then put them all together and then we have MMA -- that's mostly how I did it. I got involved just because I loved pushing myself, and I love the competition.
TVO: Was your family supportive of you going into this field?
EE: At first my parents didn't really like it. I mean my dad was a boxer, so he was always like, "I support you" . . . My dad actually passed away right before I left for TUF -- I actually wasn't going to go on the show, but my dad made me promise -- he passed away a week before I left -- he made me promise I was gonna go to the house and try my best. That's one of the other reasons why I controlled myself when Shane was calling me out and all that. But other than that, right now my mom is very supportive of me. Right now she always goes to watch my fights, she's always there to support me. And that's good because I was going to do it anyways -- I realize with or without the support you're gonna do it.
TVO: What do you think you learned the most from training with people like Nogueira, Silva, and Machida?
EE: Well on Nogueira's, he's mostly like worrying about your fight, you're in there give it all you got. One thing I picked up from him I will probably always carry is that we can't control if somebody's a better boxer or somebody is a better jiujitsu expert because that comes with experience, that comes with time. But, thanks to him, now I've seen a couple of his fights, I know that his cardio is amazing, and that's something we can all control. So if I came back with anything it's that no matter how much I train, my cardio must be top notch because if you saw his [Nogueira's] fight with Cro Cop; Cro Cop was beating him up, Cro Cop got tired, and Nogueira came out on top.
TVO: Where are you training currently?
EE: Currently I'm training up in Tempe at Southwest MMA, but I'm actually meeting Ryan Bader and Kyle Kingsbury, and we're leaving to Miami to train with Nogueira.
TVO: Any opinion on the pranks on the show? And Team Mir not showing Nogueira the proper respect?
EE: Well Nogueira gives everyone his respect, so I would expect -- I was always taught to respect your elders and respect your coaches. I mean these guys are here for us. So I guess that Frank Mir's did kind of disrespect Nogueira. But for me, freezing my underwear, I thought was funny. I laughed about it. But when they put itching powder in my stuff, that's when I was cutting weight to fight, and it did mess up my sleep and stuff, but that's one of the rules we didn't want happening. Nobody messes with our stuff.
TVO: Did you like Nogueira's more group effort, familial approach to coaching?
EE: I actually did like that approach because most of the guys, we got to bond a lot, we got to know each other a lot. So getting to sit together and eat dinner together made our time go a lot easier. As for Frank Mir's team, they were always like hating in their confessionals on the show, they're always like "they're gay," "they're fags." Junie Browning's always hating on us just because they didn't have like the unity among them. We all did one as a group, we all had fun as a group, and I think that's what made it a lot easier for all of us when we were hurting or didn't want to practice, we would make each other want to practice because we would make it fun. Team Mir would go to practice, and each individual would do their own thing. And as for Nogueira, Nogueira was a great coach because he brought us together as one because I come from a wrestling perspective where it's like a team unity -- you are as strong as your weakest link, that's what it came down to. As for Frank Mir, I don't think that he has it. He would allow his team to do whatever they wanted, and that just made it different for a lot of people because if you don't have someone to coach you or tell you what to do, everyone needs to be coached to be the best one out there.
TVO: Besides the training and the pranks, what was the hardest thing about staying in the house?
EE: Being away, being isolated from everything in the real world. Not knowing what's going on in the outside world. Not being able to talk to your family.
TVO: Good luck Efrain, and I hope we you see kick some more ass very soon.
EE: Thank you very much.
UP NEXT: The Ultimate Fighter Interview series continues. This time we get to hear from Team Mir, and light heavyweight contestant, Vinny Magalhaes.
